Help Us Help Cats

We need your help. The Cornell Feline Health Center funds studies at Cornell University that yield significant improvements in feline health. Now you can get involved and help us achieve our goal of enhancing the wellbeing of cats worldwide by providing clinical samples that can aid our studies. By taking part in this citizen science effort, you can be directly involved in a process that will improve the lives of cats (and the lives of other species, in many cases) today and into the future.

If your cat has been under the care of a veterinarian for a condition we’re studying, providing a small clinical sample can help Cornell veterinarians and scientists study the very disease that struck your own cat. Today, there are many cat diseases and conditions that are difficult or impossible to treat or address, but by working with your veterinarian and contributing to our studies, you and your cat can help change that. In addition, samples from healthy cats are needed as controls in some of our studies, so your cat does not necessarily need to be sick to help in our work.

Click on the links at the right to learn about current projects that can benefit from a clinical sample from your cat. Whether submitting a small blood sample for our Feline DNA Biobank or sending a small tissue sample from a kitty that has been diagnosed with mammary cancer, rest assured that the materials and/or information we need can be obtained with little discomfort for your kitty and minimal inconvenience for yourself. After reading about a project, if you think you'd like to help, please fill out the donation form for that project. If your donation is right for our projects, or if our scientists have more questions, we will contact you using the information you provide in the form.

If you have any questions about these opportunities, please do not hesitate to contact the coordinator listed for the study that you are interested in participating in.

On behalf of our researchers and cats worldwide, thank you for considering participating in this unique program.